"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Are Sanders and Clinton Coming Together? Depends on Who You Ask

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Bernie Sanders in March — What we will ask for if we lose. This is apparently still true.

by Gaius Publius

Now that all the primary voting is complete, the Democratic Party has the task of uniting itself. In particular, that means uniting the Sanders voters and the Clinton voters into a force to repel the Republican candidate, presumably Donald Trump. How's that going?

Depends on who you ask (I know, whom).

Here's a good write-up by John Queally at Common Dreams. He opens (my occasional emphasis):

While Clinton won Washington, DC contest as primary season came to an official end, neither camp shows much willingness to offer concessions to the other

Though Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton emerged from a ninety-minute meeting on Tuesday night reaffirming their shared commitment to defeat Donald Trump in the fall, the senator continued to withhold his endorsement of Clinton while the former secretary of state remained mum on Sanders' repeated calls for a progressive transformation of the Democratic Party's agenda and the primary process.

And there you have it, in one paragraph. She wants his explicit endorsement, which he's so far not giving. He wants her commitment to "transform" (i.e., reform) the Democratic Party, something she won't commit to, or even (apparently) comment on, at least yet.

Here's the story from the Clinton side:

"The two discussed a variety of progressive issues where they share common goals like raising wages for working families, eliminating undisclosed money in politics and reducing the cost of college for students and their families," a Clinton official said in a post-meeting statement.

And here's the story from the Sanders side:

While the remarks from the Clinton camp included specific language about "unifying" the party ahead of next month's national convention in Philadelphia, the Sanders campaign was more coy on the issue.

"Sanders and Clinton agreed to continue working to develop a progressive agenda that addresses the needs of working families and the middle class and adopting a progressive platform for the Democratic National Convention," said Sanders spokesperson Michael Briggs in a statement that avoided use of the recent buzz word "unity."

Missing from either statement was any discussion of the distance or difference between how the two candidates have proposed to reach their "common goals."

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, Sanders is determined to bring his call for democratic reforms and a more visionary platform to the convention.

"The time is long overdue for a fundamental transformation of the Democratic Party," Sanders said.

"Fundamental transformation of the Democratic Party" sounds like "reform" to me. Sounds like he still wants it, whether he's the nominee or not. Sounds also like he's ready to play his cards in July as well, and not fold his hand. (The brief video at the top tells you what he's said all along he wants.)

My take — Don't count on Sanders to surrender his key issues. He's good at judging when and where he has leverage, and he's got more leverage now than he's ever had in his life. In addition, if Matt Taibbi is to be believed, he's fundamentally understood the Democratic Party — and the political system in general — for as long as he's been a part of it.

As I mentioned on a recent Nicole Sandler Show, he's now had a chance to get his feet back under him. Seems like the battle for the "soul of the Party" continues. Sanders won't himself jeopardize the contest against Trump (or whoever), but he knows it's ultimately the candidate's job to sell herself or himself to voters. If Clinton is the candidate, Sanders would say (and has said) that it's her job to make the case. She knows what his voters want. It's up to her to offer it to them.

6 Comments:

I hope he asks for a coalition government where HE gets to pick the SoS, and the Sec of Treasury, etc and 'other' key cabinet picks in her administration. Everybody knows the 'platform' at the convention doesn't mean jack.

Donovan, you obviously haven't been paying attention forever. No winning president has let anyone but his donors pick cabinet and staff since Carter. And none have let any rival pick anyone since Lincoln's failed "team of rivals" caused him to basically go it alone in governance.

John, $he has done her thing for 56 years, since $he was working for Goldwater. **IF** she says she'll do anything other than $he's done for those 56 years, $he is lying. So I predict $he won't even bother to pander to the Bernie electorate and will dare them to not support the money.

It looks like Bernie will eventually endorse (lite, but still) and campaign for $hillbillary whether or not $he pretends to give a fuck about his electorate. And when he does, he will utterly burn his "movement" to the ground. Thus, it will join with OCCUPY and BLM and the anti-war movement of '72 in the american septic system of good ideas that an incredibly stupid electorate could not bring themselves to maintain.

In '72, the Ds decided their better warmonger, HHH, was the way to go, so we got nixon. twice. We decided that greed and fear of iran and the evil empire made more sense than incremental democrat-ism (Carter), so we got reagan. twice. We got clinton a second time which is when he REALLY paid back the money that he brought to primacy in the early '80s, and we got both cheney/bush and 2008. In 2012 we decided a 9th reagan and 4th cheney admin was more "viable" than anyone named Kucinich or Stein or Anderson or anyone else who made, you know, ... sense.

And here it is, 2016, and we actually HAD a viable and sensible and electable democrat... for a change... and most D voters STILL could not abide voting for him... and we're either going to get another reagan (the 10th) or the first mussolini admin... and likely a second of whichever it will be...

Because even when the choice is easy and obvious, american voters cannot do the right thing.

As we all should have predicted, for them to "come together", all movement must be initiated by Bernie.

$hillbillary might add a new lie or two, but we all know that a vicious leopard cannot change her spots... even if she changes her own verbal description of them.

It is looking like Bernie will provide all the movement for them to "come together", thus utterly torching whateverthefuck he did for the past year, and betraying the 10s of millions to whom he gave hope for the first time since bill Clinton formed the DLC in '81-ish.

At some point, due to normal human psychology, we who were cajoled to hope will suffer the betrayal that will break the hopeful's back. I cannot imagine another betrayal being necessary after this one. Voters (mostly black and female) are stupider than imaginable and the system is so overtly corrupt that it is impossible to imagine any reform going forward. "Strip and flip", obviously illegal, is the norm and the system has been silent on it for 16 years even though there is no attempt at a façade any more.

So... thank you, Bernie for giving millions hope. And fuck you, Bernie, for the final betrayal.

If this was the real plan all along... well, like I said... the final betrayal. Now the money can do whatever they want without even any effort to mask their goals and methods.

whoever wins, with maybe a third of voters participating, can do whatever they want... start wars to end humanity... loot the treasury for their own benefit... build walls... cull millions of brown faces... hate... fear... greed.

And now, after Comey verbally indicted "an extremely careless" $hillbillary without actually, you know, doing his fucking job... well, what is Bernie quoted as saying???

$hillbillary "won it fair and square".

So much for a "movement", much less a "revolution". Bernie has moved all the way over and is now one with the antidemocratic elitist corrupt shitstorm headed by the Clinton foundation and enabled these past 8 progressively worse years by her melanin-enhanced predecessor and co-Reagan protégée.

Thank gawd the media (and police depts.) are all over this... distracting the US of ADHD with bullshit, horseshit and more executions. I guess they felt executing innocent blacks would be better distraction than executing innocent muslims. But I'm sure they're scripting that as we speak... in case herr drumpf is named chancellor by the courts or whomever.

Fuck them all. Fuck the voters. And Fuck Bernie especially for being an unapologetic tease.